Wake County cancels June 13 makeup day for traditional-calendar schools

Instead of holding a makeup day on June 13, traditional-calendar schools that are short of the state’s requirement of 1,025 hours of instruction will consider options such as shortening lunch periods, reducing the time to change classes and canceling some fun but non-instructional activities.

The Wake County school system is canceling some makeup days, but it could come at the cost of changes such as shorter lunch periods, less time to change class and canceling some non-instructional activities.

The school system announced Thursday that the June 13 makeup day for traditional-calendar students and the June 2 makeup day for the the single-sex leadership academies and the N.C. State STEM Early College have been canceled.

School officials say that schools which already meet the state requirement of at least 1,025 hours of instruction this school year won’t need to make up any time.

But school official say that schools which are short of the 1,025 hours will have to make changes to their schedules. School officials say options include shortening class change time, shortening lunch periods, or eliminating a non-instructional activity. Wake’s press release didn’t spell out what are non-instructional activities, but we’re probably talking about things like assemblies.

It appears that high schools and middle schools are most in need of making up the time.

Before this school year, North Carolina public schools had to meet minimums for the number of school days and instructional hours each school year. School districts were given the option this school year of meeting either option with most schools choosing to meet the time requirements.

The WakeEd blog is devoted to discussing and answering questions about the major issues facing the Wake County school system. WakeEd is maintained by The News & Observer's Wake schools reporter, T. Keung Hui.